Twitter Mailbag: Fowlkes on 'Mieshaway,' Cain-JDS 3 and if GSP is a 'coward'

The Twitter Mailbag is back just in time to take on pressing issues such as the coach shakeup on “The Ultimate Fighter,” the looming UFC heavyweight trilogy and the nagging question of whether you have to be good at fighting in order to enjoy watching other people do it.

Direct your own question to @BenFowlkesMMA on Twitter, or just keep pretending that you’re too cool for social media. Your choice.

@benfowlkesmma tmb: Tate getting a title shot coming off a loss; seems to be a disturbing trend. Is the idea of earningthings over?

Not surprisingly, this week’s TMB received a lot of questions that I’d group in the “Miesha Tate, ‘sup with that?!” category. I get that, even if I do wonder how much of the backlash is due to Bryan Caraway doing his part to ensure that he and Tate are MMA’s least popular power couple (which I will refer to henceforth as “Mieshaway”), and how much is due to us getting sick of this whole losses followed by title shots thing. We saw it at light heavyweight, with Chael Sonnen and Jon Jones. We saw it at welterweight, with Nick Diaz and Georges St-Pierre. Now we see it in the women’s bantamweight division, with Tate and Ronda Rousey. So what gives?

The short answer is: money gives. Or, more accurately, fans give … money to the UFC in order to see these fights. That’s why all of those fights happened. The UFC looked at which matchup would sell the best, then worked its way back from there to find a way to justify it. In the case of Tate and Rousey, a knee injury to Cat Zingano forced the UFC to either delay the fight or come up with a Plan B. A delay might have been the most fair thing, but not terribly profitable. Especially not when you have to feed the reality show monkey. Instead we get Tate. We also get to hear about how it’s not so bad, because she was totally winning the first two rounds of that Zingano fight. As if that means anything at all in this sport. Still though, Miesha hates Ronda and Ronda hates Miesha. So there you go. That’ll sell, right? It better, because it’s the only reason it’s happening.

Maybe. That would have pit one Olympic medalist against another, which is always fun. Then again, there’s no built-in rivalry between Sara McMann and Rousey. And if there’s one thing fight promoters and reality TV producers share, it’s a love for table-flipping, glass-throwing, ratings-getting rivalries. We also have to consider the possibility that McMann just isn’t ready yet. She’s been a pro for about two years now, and her game is just starting to round out. In another fight or two, she might be a real threat to Rousey. But if what the UFC is looking for now is a reality TV character, it’s not such a travesty to let McMann sit this one out.

@benfowlkesmma TMB: Pyle made almost 90k on the undercard. Risk of getting cut Fitch-style?

Thanks for that depressing thought, Max. But I’ll admit, you kind of have a point. Here’s Mike Pyle, currently on a four-fight win streak in the UFC, bumping up his pay with every victory until he’s finally pulling some decent coin, and yet the ghost of Jon Fitch reminds us that there’s always a danger of pricing yourself out of a job in the UFC. The good news for Pyle is that his style tends to be more exciting than Fitch’s. That means the UFC is less likely to feel like it’s shelling out big bucks for the privilege of having a fighter put its fans to sleep. The bad news is, big bucks can make you a big target. Then again, guys making six and six get cut too. If you’re going to have the stress either way, you might as well also have the money.

@benfowlkesmma what do you think of JDS getting his rubber match against Cain so quick? Is he ready? #TMB

Remind me again, how many fights did Cain Velasquez win before he got a rematch with Junior dos Santos? The correct answer is: one. The same number of fights dos Santos won in order to earn his rematch with Velasquez. Seems fair to me, especially since you could argue that JDS had the tougher opponent to deal with. But is he ready, you ask? Well, he has fought Velasquez twice. He’s also fought a bunch of other top heavyweights, and he beat them all. If he’s not ready now, he probably never will be.

@benfowlkesmma What do you think of Cat Zingano tweeting about coaching on TUF a week after hurting her knee? Why mislead fans like that?

For those unaware, MDS is referring to this tweet from Zingano, where on May 21 she appears to be brimming with enthusiasm about her “TUF” coaching gig, promising it will be “the best season of the Ultimate Fighter ever!” The problem is, according to Yahoo!’s Kevin Iole, Zingano blew out her knee five days earlier. According to Zingano’s manager, Ricky Vasquez of Phenom Management, the decision to pull her from the “TUF” coaching gig wasn’t made until May 23 – two days after that tweet. That’s when the UFC flew her to Vegas for an MRI, Vasquez said.

“We met with Dana and he made the decision she won’t be able to coach on TUF,” Vasquez said via text message. “But when she’s 100% healthy she’ll get the title shot she earned.”

Vasquez also said that while Zingano was naturally disappointed about being pulled from “TUF,” the UFC’s treatment of her has helped ease the blow. According to Vasquez, the UFC sent her to the same knee surgeon who operated on Georges St-Pierre, put her and her family up in a suite in L.A. while she deals with the surgery and the rehab, and is paying all her expenses in the meantime.

@benfowlkesmma Right now, who do you favour in the third Cain/JDS fight, and why? #TMB

I have no idea, which is why I’m so excited about it. You get two talented heavyweights in there, both of them learning and adjusting and anticipating based on what they already know about each other, and it feels like a violent coin flip. It’s a truly unpredictable title fight, and the UFC could use a few of those after recent mismatches, don’t you think?

@benfowlkesmma GSP said Weidman 100% wins against Silva: how did you interpret this? GSP being a hype-man, friend, or coward? #tmb

One thing I definitely wouldn’t accuse the world’s best 170-pound fighter of being is a coward. That’s like accusing a librarian of being illiterate. You carve out a career for yourself in the world of professional cage fighting, it’s probably safe to say that you’re not afraid of being punched in the face. But, like you, I thought it was odd to hear (via Dana White, so yeah, grain of salt) that GSP supposedly thinks Chris Weidman will absolutely, positively beat Anderson Silva. For one thing, Weidman is coming off an injury layoff, and GSP should know how tough that can be. For another, this is Anderson freaking Silva we’re talking about. It’s also mixed martial freaking arts we’re talking about, and nothing is 100 percent in this sport.

So what should we make of GSP’s bold prediction? I’m mostly inclined to put it in the friend/hype-man category. What else are you supposed to say when your friend is fighting? Of course you say that he’s definitely going to win. If you turn out to be wrong, so what? Better to have a dismal fight-picking record and still have friends than to be the brilliant prognosticator who never gets invited out to lunch. In GSP’s case, however, there’s also another reason for him to back Weidman. As long as he can say that he doesn’t believe Silva will be the champ by summer’s end, he can put off that annoying superfight talk and focus on his own division. And if you happen to be the world’s best welterweight, who can blame you if you prefer to focus on fighting other welterweights?

@benfowlkesmma Why does Dana keep telling fighters that they need to retire where those fighters and its fans believe they can still do it?

If you haven’t already seen it, check out the ESPN “30 for 30″ documentary “Muhammad and Larry,” which chronicles the 1980 heavyweight title fight between Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes. It’s tough to watch at times, but should be required viewing for all fans of combat sports. Ali was 38 years old at the time and he had no business fighting Holmes or anyone else. It’s easy to see that now, more than three decades later, but at the time there were plenty of people – fans, flunkies, trainers, promoters – whispering in Ali’s ear that he could still do it. He couldn’t. He took a terrible beating against Holmes, and he took it for no good reason. I think Dana White is enough of a student of boxing history to know that the same thing will happen to MMA fighters if we don’t do something to stop it. When he says he doesn’t want to make one dime of that kind of money, I believe him. I also believe that this is one area where the UFC’s power and influence over the sport as a whole could be a necessary force for good. It’s hard to convince a fighter to retire. It’s even harder when there are so many people trying to convince him not to, usually for their own financial gain. If White can get a few fighters who no longer need the money or the glory to hang it up while they’re still reasonably healthy, I’m all for it.

@benfowlkesmma if you’re the UFC, what do you do with Hunt going forward? Put him in just ‘fun fights’ or get him back in contention? #tmb

The UFC seems more comfortable with the idea of Mark Hunt as a fun fight generator than as a title contender. I know Hunt bristles as the suggestion that he’s just a big, tough dude rather than a world-class heavyweight (and can you blame him?), but I think his UFC career up to this point demonstrates that fun fighters can become potential contenders if they start stacking up the wins. His loss to dos Santos may have hurt Hunt’s chances of fighting for a UFC title, but I don’t think it dampened fan enthusiasm for him one bit.

@benfowlkesmma#tmb is it strange that I love MMA but havent trained a day of fighting or martial arts?

This question gets raised a lot among MMA fans and media, but I don’t get it. Who says you have to do something in order to enjoy watching other people do it? If you can’t sing or play an instrument, does that mean you shouldn’t listen to the radio? If you’ve never strapped on a helmet and shoulder pads, is it weird that you’d enjoy sitting down on Sunday and watching an NFL game? If you’ve never even tried to write a screenplay, does that mean you should stay away from movie theaters altogether, you big n00b?

I don’t think so, and I don’t think many people even bother to make that argument with other sports or activities. From a practical standpoint, I also don’t think that doing jiu-jitsu or muay Thai a few nights a week is going to give you all that much insight into what it’s like to get in a cage and fight for a living – and I say that as someone who does do jiu-jitsu a few nights a week. That might help me appreciate a slick guard pass here and there, but if I think that a few hours on the mat gives me some superior understanding of what professional fighters go through then I’m kidding myself. It’s like thinking that the three seasons of baseball you played in high school helps you know what it’s like to play for money in front of 30,000 people who will curse your mother if you strike out with the bases loaded.

Doing something professionally is totally different than doing it for fun. And there are plenty of things that we wouldn’t even want to do for fun that we still enjoy watching. It might be worth reminding ourselves every once in a while that the experience of watching gives us very little insight into the experience of doing, but don’t beat yourself up about it. Because, honestly, if everyone could sit down and belt out the guitar solo from “November Rain” on command, who would pay to watch a pro do it?

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie.com and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.com.

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is probably the greatest female fighter on the planet, which is a tremendous feat. So why are we seemingly so obsessed with arguing about whether she could beat up men?